likeness of Himself. For though beauty often is proud and trivial, yet it is a manifestation of Him from whom all beauty comes, in whom all beauty dwells, by whom all beauty exists. And so not only thank--pray. Pray to Him that the outward and visible may be ever more and more but an expression of something inward and unseen and spiritual. For beauty, grace, intellect, everything is doomed, unless it is sacramental--unless it draws its life from God below, unless it lives but to testify of Him who is. It is an awful problem--a beautiful face with no true moral beauty below--splendid physical grace with no deeper grace beneath--a strong, capable intellect which is not the expression of a noble soul. What does it all mean? How in a world, where the outward and visible is but a manifestation of the {79} good God, can such awful anomalies exist? Partly it is due to the law that goodness is rewarded to a thousand generations (Exodus xx. 6. R.V. margin, cf. Deut. vii. 9), while wickedness is visited upon the third and fourth--that is, that one who is beautiful in body or intellect, and who knows God, leaves the blessing of such beauty long after him to descendants who are little conscious of the reason of its origin, and who have little thought of God. Beautiful eyes, where there is no beauty of soul beneath, are the eyes of others, long since dead, looking at us still--men who served God in their generation. An exquisitely touching voice, where there is no music in the life of the one who possesses it, may be the voice of one who knew God, and left his legacy for a thousand generations. But still the problem remains. In many cases the outward and inward seem divorced. Now let us not try rashly to solve the problem ourselves. We are inclined when we see such beauty to say, 'It is no use talking. I am quite sure, whatever you say, that there must be some fine traits in the character of one whose face is like the face of an angel, whose voice is sweeter than that of the sons of men.' We may be, I believe we are, partly right--at least in many cases, for the spiritual powers of those who are gone may still in part live on in their descendants. But often, if we are candid, we must admit that apparently the outward and visible are separated from the inward and spiritual, that we have outward beauty and grace which is no sign at all of anything deeper--nay, that the very spiritual qualities, of which it is the sign, {80} and which may once have existed in the person, have been used for the vilest ends. This being the case, we are still left with the problem, Is the outward and visible not intended to be a sign of something deeper? Here it is not a sign. Why not? Will it ever be so? To put the case in its short, simple, concrete form, how can a 'flirt' exist when by all the laws of the universe beauty should surely be a sign not of instability, insipidity, unspirituality, worldliness, shallowness, hypocrisy, but of the Supreme?